1 E.g., William J. Goode, Robert K. Merton, & Mary Jean Huntington, The Professions in Modern Society (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1957); William J. Goode, Community Within a Community: The Professions, 22 Am. Soc. Rev. 194 (1957); Robert Perucci & Joel Gerstl, Profession Without Community: Engineers in American Society (New York: Random House, 1969). But see Rue Bucher & Anselm Straws, Professions in Process, 66 Am. J. Soc. 325 (1961).Google Scholar

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3 Fragmentation within the legal profession has been documented in a series of studies of the metropolitan bar. E.g., Jack Ladinsky, The Impact of Social Backgrounds of Lawyers on Law Practice and the Law, 16 J. Legal Educ. 127 (1963); Jerome E. Carlin, Lawyers on Their Own: A Study of Individual Practitioners (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1962); id., Lawyers' Ethics: A Survey of the New York City Bar (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1966); Erwin O. Smigel, The Wall Street Lawyer: Professional Organization Man? (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969); John P. Heinz & Edward O. Laumann, Chicago Lawyers: The Social Structure of the Bar (New York: Russell Sage Foundation; Chicago: American Bar Foundation, 1982).Google Scholar

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5 The population of attorneys from which the sample was selected was limited to attorneys in private practice. The list was compiled from the 1980 Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory and From the 1981 Missouri Legal Directory published by the Legal Directories Publishing Co., Dallas, Texas. The table below indicates the size of the final sample.Google Scholar

Respondents to the Nonurban Bar Survey, by Community SizeGoogle Scholar

6 Arthur J. Vidich & Joseph Bensman, Small Town in Mass Society: Class, Power, and Religion in a Rural Community (rev. ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968). See also Don Martindale & R. Galen Hanson, Small Town and the Nation: The Conflict of Local and Translocal Forces (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Corp., 1969), for a similar orientation.Google Scholar

7 Richards, Robert O., Urbanization of Rural Areas, in David Street et al., Handbook of Contemporary Urban Life: An Examination of Urbanization, Social Organization and Metropolitan Politics (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 1978); J. Rubin, Growth and Expansion of Urban Centers in A. M. Wakstein, ed., The Urbanization of America: A Historical Anthology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1970).Google Scholar

8 Three general positions on the issues are found in the literature. One asserts that there is a direct, universal effect of population size, density, and heterogeneity on important aspects of social structure, culture, and personality. Another takes the opposite view-that few if any social, cultural, or personality characteristics are necessarily and invariably associated with the size, density, and heterogeneity of settlements. A third and intermediate view suggests that population concentrations tend to produce a diversity of subcultures and to foster diffusion among them. For an evaluation of the positions see N. D. Glenn & L. Hill, Jr., Rural and Urban Differences in Attitude and Behavior in the US, in 429 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 36 (1977).Google Scholar

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11 Glenn & Hill, supra note 8, at 41. see also Fischer, Claude S., To Dwell Among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City chs. 6, 16 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).Google Scholar

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17 Thomas Reuben Bell, Law Practice in a Small Town 9 (master's thesis, Harvard University Law School, 1969).Google Scholar

18 Multiplex relationships involve a number of functional and/or affective ties between any two individuals. Simplex relationships are more restricted, involving only a single functional or affective tie between individuals. See J. Van Velson, Procedural Informality, Reconciliation and False Comparisons, in Max Gluckman, ed., Ideas and Procedures in African Customary Law (London: Oxford University Press, 1966). see also Kidder, Robert L., Formal Litigation and Professional Insecurity: Legal Entrepreneurship in South India, 9 Law & Soc'y Rev. 11, 31 (1974).Google Scholar

19 See generally Marvin E. Frankel, Partisan Justice 21–26 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1978); William H. Simon, The Ideology of Advocacy: Procedural Justice and Professional Ethics, 1978 Wis. L. Rev. 29.Google Scholar

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30 Frankel, supra note 19, at ch. 9. But see Strick, supra note 22, at ch. 15.Google Scholar

31 Changes include broadening the definition of lawyering from the narrow view of combatant, usually in a courtroom, to a more comprehensive framework where lawyering is seen as counseling, negotiating, drafting, mediating, etc. See Brown, Louis M. & Dauer, Edward A., Professional Responsibility in Non-adversarial Lawyering: A Review of the Model Rules, 1982 A.B.F. Res. J. 519.Google Scholar

32 For the primary studies of the metropolitan bar see note 3 supra. Small-town studies are limited to Joel F. Handler, The Lawyer and His Community (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), which examines law practice in a midwest community of 90,000, and Donald D. Landon, Lawyers and Localities: The Interaction of Community Context and Professionalism, 1982 A.B.F. Res. J. 459, which is a preliminary analysis of law practice in towns of under 20,000. An unpublished thesis by Bell (supra note 17) is a descriptive study of small-town practice based primarily on the personal experience of the author. For insight into litigation in smaller settings see David M. Engel, Legal Pluralism in an American Community: Perspectives on a Civil Trial Court, 1980 A.B.F. Res. J. 425; id., The Ovenbird's Song: Insiders, Outsiders, and Personal Injuries in an American Community, paper delivered at the Law and Society Association meeting, Denver, 1983; id., Cases, Conflict, and Accommodation: Patterns of Legal Interaction in a Small Community, 1983 A.B.F. Res. J. 803; Stephen Daniels, Civil Litigation in Illinois Trial Courts: An Exploration of Rural-Urban Differences, 4 Law & Pol'y Q. 190 (1982).Google Scholar

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35 Id. at 121. Lingeman also quotes Henry Howe who described litigation in pioneer Ohio.Google Scholar

In newly settled counties there appears to be a particular fondness among people for lawsuits. After a court has been organized in a new county they will still continue to settle their quarrels by combat until fines become too troublesome. The court then becomes the arena in which their contentions and quarrels are carried out and finally disposed of. If one cannot afford the fine or imprisonment which would be incurred by taking satisfaction, he can bring a suit, if any cause of action can be found and no matter how small the amount claimed or frivolous the matter, if he can only cast his adversary and throw him into the courts, he is as much gratified as if he had made him hollow (holler) “enuf—take him off.”Google Scholar

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36 See Daniels, , supra note 32; Engel, Ovenbird's Song, supra note 32.Google Scholar

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38 Frances Kahn Zemans, Framework for Analysis of Legal Mobilization: A Decision-Making Model, 1982 A.B.F. Res. J. 989, 1023. R. M. Gifford notes that in a survey of the Missouri Bar in 1974 there was a significantly higher percentage of lawyers from metropolitan settings reporting “unreasonable adversaries,” as contrasted with reports from lawyers in rural counties. See J. Mo. B., June 1977, at 229.Google Scholar

39 Engel, Ovenbird's Song, supra note 32.Google Scholar

40 The reluctance to use the adversary process in rural areas is not unique. Even in contemporary society the “compromise” system is preferred in a situation in which the disputants must live together afterward. Arbitration as a means of settling labor disputes illustrates the fact. Moreover, one study of businessmen showed they did not want to bring suits against customers with whom they expect to do business after the dispute is settled. See Macaulay, Stewart, Non-Contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study, 28 Am. Soc. Rev. 55 (1963).Google Scholar

41 See Fischer, , supra note 11, at 45–62.Google Scholar

42 Carlin, Lawyers on Their Own, supra note 3, discovered that “even though a reputation may be established in a particular neighborhood or in certain ethnic islands, this is precisely the kind of identity and the kind of practice that is least desired and one which the individual practitioner makes every effort to move beyond.”Id. at 147.Google Scholar

43 Thomas, Edwin J., Role Conceptions, Organizational Size, and Community Context, in Bruce J. Biddle & Edwin J. Thomas, eds., Role Theory: Concepts and Research 167 (New York: John Wiley & sons, 1966).Google Scholar

44 The data show that 51% of the rural practitioners in this study pursued business interests in addition to their law practice; 12% were involved in three or more enterprises besides law practice. The extremely varied enterprises included Amway distributorships, oil drilling, boat manufacture, antique sales, asphalt business, Cambridge Diet counseling, etc., in addition to the more conventional roles of farmer, landlord, shop owner, or newspaper publisher. Attorneys in small towns are seen as entrepreneurs.Google Scholar

45 See Simmel, Georg, The Stranger, in Kurt Wolff, ed., The Sociology of Georg Simmel (New York: Free Press, 1950).Google Scholar

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49 Dan Fenno Henderson, Law and Political Modernization in Japan, in Robert Ward, ed., Political Development in Modern Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

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54 See Goffman, Erving, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1959). Goffman's analysis of front stage behavior helps us understand the lawyer as actor. In his capacity as a professional, the lawyer is concerned with maintaining the impression that he is living up to the many standards by which he and his work are judged. In the intimate setting of a small town, these standards are numerous and pervasive. The lawyer consequently dwells more than we might think in a moral world. While as an actor or performer he may not be concerned with the moral issue of realizing the standards set for him, he is always concerned with the amoral issue of constructing a convincing impression to the community that these standards are being realized.Google Scholar

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Engel also cites the conservative attitudes of rural juries toward personal injury suits as a factor in constraining such litigation. One rural insurance adjuster told him, “The jury will be people from right around here …. A good share of them will be farmers, and they've been out there slaving away for every penny they've got and aren't about to just give it away to make that free gift to anybody.”Id. Google Scholar

58 See Zemans, , supra note 38, at 1024. See also James Willard Hurst. The Functions of the Courts in the United States: 1950–1980, 15 Law & Soc'y Rev. 401, 422 (1980–81); Galanter, supra note 56; Austin Sarat, Alternatives in Dispute Processing: Litigation in Small Claims Court, 10 Law & Soc'y Rev. 339 (1976); Roger B. Huntin & Gloria Neuwirth, Who Sues in New York City? A Study of Automobile Accident Claims 109 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962).Google Scholar

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61 Wood and Wardell discovered that community leadership was an important extraprofessional role, particularly among attorneys in smaller settings. See Wood, Arthur L. & Wardell, Walter, The Lawyer and Community Leadership, 9 J. Legal Educ. 162 (1956). See also Thomas James Matthews, The Lawyer as Community Leader: One Dimension of a Professional Role (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1952).Google Scholar

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70 Abraham S. Blumberg has pointed this out in reference to the work of defense attorneys. Their continuing contacts are with police, bail bondsmen, prosecutors, and other court personnel; clients tend to be gone when the case is finished. See his The Practice of Law as a Confidence Game: Organizational Cooptation of a Profession, Law & Soc'y Rev., June 1967, at 15. In rural practice lawyers typically rely on each other for referrals and also for not complicating one another's workload by unnecessary paper work.Google Scholar

71 Role set refers to the particular complex of positions in which an individual holds simultaneous memberships. Male, father, husband, lodge member, Caucasian, businessman, son, Catholic, uncle, and Democrat are designations for a partial set of such positions in which a given man may hold memberships. See Merton, Robert K., Social Theory and Social Structure 368 (New York: Free Press, 1957).Google Scholar

72 Curtis, Charles, It's Your Law 20 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954).Google Scholar